Why not start small by building a Cardboard Smart Home. Adafruit IO Home is a series of learning guides covering all aspects of a smart house: from temperature monitoring to an intelligent home security system.
In this guide, we’re going to take our cardboard smart-home and equip it with sensors to protect the home against intruders, wanna-be burglars, and invisible chemicals.
We’ll be using Adafruit IO to create an interactive dashboard
Build the home
and interact with the security system within
Want to scale up from the cardboard home to a real home? We’ve selected real-world components, sensors, and hardware which can also be installed in your home, office or laboratory!
This guide works with both Arduino and CircuitPython
Stop breadboarding and soldering – start making immediately! Adafruit’s Circuit Playground is jam-packed with LEDs, sensors, buttons, alligator clip pads and more. Build projects with Circuit Playground in a few minutes with the drag-and-drop MakeCode programming site, learn computer science using the CS Discoveries class on code.org, jump into CircuitPython to learn Python and hardware together, TinyGO, or even use the Arduino IDE. Circuit Playground Express is the newest and best Circuit Playground board, with support for CircuitPython, MakeCode, and Arduino. It has a powerful processor, 10 NeoPixels, mini speaker, InfraRed receive and transmit, two buttons, a switch, 14 alligator clip pads, and lots of sensors: capacitive touch, IR proximity, temperature, light, motion and sound. A whole wide world of electronics and coding is waiting for you, and it fits in the palm of your hand.
Have an amazing project to share? The Electronics Show and Tell is every Wednesday at 7pm ET! To join, head over to YouTube and check out the show’s live chat – we’ll post the link there.